For the five African teams, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia was a tournament of regret. Not even the fact that eventual champions France was packed with players with African roots, could heal the hurt. What made it more painful was that the continent's strongest contender, Senegal, fell victim to FIFA's controversial "fair play" rule. The West Africans were eliminated because they had more yellow cards than Japan.
The overall statistics paint a disappointing picture. All five African teams exited in the first round, making it the worst performance by the continent since 1982, the last time not one African team made it to the second stage. Since then, Cameroon (in 1990), Senegal (2002) and Ghana (2010) have made it to the quarterfinals. Nigeria has regularly progressed to the second round.
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